Michael Fassbender is 100 percent robot cool in the first footage from 'Alien: Covenant'

The 'Alien' series has a bad history with dinner scenes: in the first one, John Hurt exploded all over the dining table; in 'Aliens' a droid went batshit with a pocket knife; and in 'Alien 3', Yorkshire Tea spokesman Brian Glover got his head ripped off while everyone else was tucking into their grub. So when the first released clip from Ridley Scott's latest return to this dark universe is entitled 'Last Supper', you kind of expect blood on the crockery.

But despite one cheap, manipulative and okay, pretty nerve-jangling fake-out, all the clip does is introduce us to the crew of the Covenant, a ship on course for a distant world to start a new human colony. There's Captain James Franco, looking a bit scruffy but generally responsible. There's shipboard robot Michael Fassbender, looking only marginally less mad than his clone brother in Scott's last 'Alien' flick, the decidedly naff 'Prometheus'. There a science team headed by Billy Crudup and 'Fantastic Beasts' star Katherine Waterston, and there's comic relief provided by the clip's star player, Danny McBride.

To be honest, these five minutes are probably more enjoyable than the whole of 'Prometheus': the cast are very likeable, the bants flow freely and there's a real sense of adventure. Can Ridley pull it back and make a decent 'Alien' movie again? We'll find out when 'Alien: Covenant' comes out on May 19th.